I feel absolutely sick. The bulldozers pulled out of Susiya in the South Hebron Hills and apparently they went to Al Aqaba where I have heard they destroyed the home of Khaled. I believe that is the person we visited in 2010. I have attached a photo of our group eating the lunch his family had prepared for us. A photo of his family (now 5 years older) and a photo of the solar power battery which was one of the many improvements he had proudly made to his home because the Israelis denied the village power or water.

This is so absolutely cruel. The man we met is so hard-working to make a beautiful life for his family. There was a demolition order on their door in 2010 and I used his story to talk about dispossession for Palestinians and the arbitrariness of it. It breaks my heart. All that time and effort and compassion poured into Susiya and collateral damage some distance away for this particular family.

I am so angry. And I feel so powerless. I watched a BBC program about the refugees at Calais. I see hundreds of people drowning in the Mediterranean. I saw a program about Hanford where the Americans worked on building the nuclear bomb. And today is Hiroshima Day. All my life Hiroshima Day has been the day after my birthday. Literally, the day after I was born this tragedy was unleashed on the world.

“Susiya is a Legend of Palestinian Resistance,” declares Nasser Nawaja’a, Susiya’s young spokesperson and rising Palestinian leader. “As goes Susiya, so goes the rest of the West Bank’s Area C.”Today, August 4, 2015, the village of Khirbet Susiya is not only present, without demolitions, but is hosting a mini United Nations. The outcry from the world has been enormous. The European Union, the US Acting Consul General, members of the Israeli Knesset (government), the Prime Minister of Palestine and many, many national and international organizations have shown support. Israeli groups have taken a leadership role with community members organizing for Susiya’s survival and informing the world of Israeli government policies, where according to Rabbi for Human Rights spokesperson, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, “…the deck is stacked against Palestinians…” by Israeli government policy. Susiya made it to question period at the US State Department July 17, 2015. Daily Press Briefing - July 16, 2015. The list of who in the press scene has been to Susiya is unbelievable: when a media team from Kazakhstan arrives in tiny Susiya along with Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, the New York Times, Reuters, Le Monde and even CNN, you know something is happening. Symbolic Susiya…Why all the fuss over this one small 350 person village somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Palestine?

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